A Small-Town Texas Librarian’s Big Stand Against Book Bans
In Llano County, a local librarian fought back against censorship, prompting a federal court fight and national recognition but losing the job of her dreams.
Open Society
Anthony Fauci’s Side of the Story
The former NIAID director has been both lauded and demonized for his work during the COVID pandemic, but his autobiography insists that his career needs to be seen whole to be understood.
We Didn't Build This City On Rock 'N' Roll. It Was Yogurt
We got milk when we domesticated goats and sheep around 9,000 BC. At first, that milk was easier to digest when fermented. So yogurt, along with other Neolithic foods, helped fuel civilization.
NEST (NEurodivergent peer Support Toolkit)
NEST (NEurodivergent peer Support Toolkit) is a suite of materials to facilitate peer support for neurodivergent young people in mainstream secondary schools. The toolkit has been co-created by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, neurodivergent young people and a neurodiverse group of adults who work with neurodivergent young people.
WWDC 2024: Apple Intelligence
Apple is focusing on what it can do that no one else can on Apple devices, and not really even trying to compete against ChatGPT *et al.* for world-knowledge context. They’re focusing on unique differentiation, and eschewing commoditization.
First, their models are almost entirely based on personal context, by way of an on-device semantic index. In broad strokes, this on-device semantic index can be thought of as a next-generation Spotlight. Apple is focusing on what it can do that no one else can on Apple devices, and not really even trying to compete against ChatGPT et al. for world-knowledge context. They’re focusing on unique differentiation, and eschewing commoditization.
Neuro-Holographic Thoughts
To be neuro-holograpic, to resonate with holotropism and embrace neuroqueer theory means that the weight of neuronormativity…
Unable to see shades of lived nuance and constitutionally lacking organs of exquisite sensitivity, the truncated, neurotypical gaze rakes over the bodies of (neuro-holographic) life — whether designated autistic, animal, any other undesirable caste, or nature itself — they assess them only in terms of cost, threats, or utility. They can’t or won’t see them.
Modern, connectively truncated influence has driven an obsession with homogeneity and increasingly raised a maniacal rejection of inward and outward difference to a hellish art form. The lives (and deaths) of sentient, (neuro-holograhpic) beings is foundational to daily life and underscores the danger of using gifts evolutionarily tooled for a better, more compassionate future are pressed into service for the structure we were put here to change.
(Dawn Prince Hughes, 2023)
*neuro-holographic = my edits.
I have intentionally used a hyphen between the words neuro and holographic to represent the in-between of neurology and holographic ways of being and experiencing the world, a pause for tuning in, an embodiment, a space of Ma. I have resisted using the word “neuro-holographism as that could imply another new theory or concept. Neuro-holographic is not a concept; rather I feel like it IS the plane of immanence on which neuroqueer theory breathes and lives; it is the ‘wave that rolls and unrolls’ other concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, What is Philosophy, 1994, p36). To resonate with the term neuro-holographic is to resonate as souls, with your core self, perhaps with your spirit.
Perhaps the beauty lies in the way that the word neuro-holographic can only be felt or experienced in a luminescent, undefinable iridescent way, which creates a holographic energy of light and vibration that expands and ripples beyond our singular bodyminds to connect with other bodyminds, it creates multiplicity from the friction between us as humans. Connecting with others enables an expansion of our community rhizomes in ways that are exciting and full of radical inclusive neuroqueer possibilities.
Apocryphal theatre: practicing philosophies
Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers.
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy
Whereas American narratives focus on the individual, the Blackfoot way of life offers an alternative of a community that leaves no one behind
According to Blood and Heavy Head’s lectures (2007), 30-year-old Maslow arrived at Siksika along with Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks. He intended to test the universality of his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance of some people over others. However, he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population” (video 7 out of 15, minutes 13:45–14:15). As Ryan Heavy Head shared with me on the phone, “Maslow saw a place where what he would later call self-actualization was the norm.” This observation, Heavy Head continued, “totally changed his trajectory.” (For the reader wondering what self-actualization is, Maslow offered this definition, influenced by Kurt Goldstein, in his 1943 paper: “This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” The word itself does not exist in the Siksika language, but the closest word is niita’pitapi, which Ryan Heavy Head told me means “someone who is completely developed, or who has arrived.”)
Maslow then wondered whether the answer to producing high self-actualization might lie in child-rearing. He found that children were raised with great permissiveness and treated as equal members of Siksika society, in contrast to a strict, disciplinary approach found in his own culture. Despite having great freedom, Siksika children listened to their elders and served the community from a young age (ibid, minutes 16:35–17:07).
According to Heavy Head, witnessing the qualities of self-actualization among the Blackfoot and diving into their practices led Maslow to deeper research into the journey to self-actualization, and the eventual publishing of his famous Hierarchy of Needs concept in his 1943 paper.
Maslow appeared to ask, “how do we become self-actualized?”. Many First Nation communities, though they would not have used the same word, might be more likely to believe that we arrive on the planet self-actualized. Ryan Heavy Head explained the difference through the analogy of earning a college degree. In Western culture, you earn a degree after paying tuition, attending classes, and proving sufficient mastery of your area of study. In Blackfoot culture, “it’s like you’re credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend your life living up to that.” While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them space to express who they are (as perhaps manifested by the permissiveness with which the Siksika raise their children) rather than making them the best they can be. For many First Nations, therefore, self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity. Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world. (As some readers have commented, this concept appears in other belief systems, such as Paulo Freire’s challenge to the “banking concept of education” and the Buddhist notion that all beings contain Buddha-nature.)
As Maslow witnessed in the Blackfoot Giveaway, many First Nation cultures see the work of meeting basic needs, ensuring safety, and creating the conditions for the expression of purpose as a community responsibility, not an individual one. Blackstock refers to this as “Community Actualization.” Edgar Villanueva (2018) offers a beautiful example of how deeply ingrained this way of thinking is among First Nations in his book Decolonizing Wealth. He quotes Dana Arviso, Executive Director of the Potlatch Fund and member of the Navajo tribe, who recalls a time she asked Native communities in the Cheyenne River territory about poverty:
“They told me they don’t have a word for poverty,” she said. “The closest thing that they had as an explanation for poverty was ‘to be without family.’” Which is basically unheard of. “They were saying it was a foreign concept to them that someone could be just so isolated and so without any sort of a safety net or a family or a sense of kinship that they would be suffering from poverty.” (p. 151)
The triangular models above suggest that there’s a place to start meeting our needs and a place we end up. But is it true that our needs follow Maslow’s hierarchy of “prepotency”, where some needs consistently take priority over others? Maslow (1943) himself indicates there are many exceptions to his hierarchy and Blackstock (2011) agrees, citing Seneca First Nation member and psychologist Terry Cross:
Cross (2007) argues that human needs are not uniformly hierarchical but rather highly interdependent […] [P]hysical needs are not always primary in nature as Maslow argues, given the many examples of people who forgo physical safety and well-being in order to achieve love, belonging, and relationships or to achieve spiritual or pedagogical objectives. The idea of dying for country is an example of this as men and women fight in times of war.
As Seneca First Nation member and psychologist Terry Cross defines it in this keynote presentation, “culture is one group or people’s preferred way of meeting their basic human needs.”
Because it has affected us all and exposed fissures in our structural underpinnings, this pandemic may be our moment to interrupt our old story. It’s prompted us to embrace previously heretical ideas like reparations, universal basic income in the form of stimulus checks, and mutual aid. This is our moment to step out of our lonely struggle to fend for ourselves, a story maintained by those winning in the status quo. This is our moment not to create something new, but to return to an ancient way of being, known to the Blackfoot the Lakota, the Natives of the Cheyenne River Territory, and other First Nations. It’s a story that leaves no one without family: a story in which we begin by offering each other belonging, and continue by teaching our descendents how we lived: together.
Before Maslow’s Hierarchy: The Whitewashing of Indigenous Knowledge
For the last few months, I’ve been wincing a bit every time I see a
Neuro-Holographic
I believe that the DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem) is at the heart of all the systemic ableist issues we have in our education…
Systems: What does a board of directors do? - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity
The only thing you should be doing is improving your operations and culture, and that will give you the ability to use AI if it ever becomes relevant. Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving. Fix. Your. Shit.
I cannot emphasize this enough. You either need to be on the absolute cutting-edge and producing novel research, or you should be doing exactly what you were doing five years ago with minor concessions to incorporating LLMs. Anything in the middle ground does not make any sense unless you actually work in the rare field where your industry is being totally disrupted right now.
Identity Politics and Elite Capture - Boston Review
The wealthy and powerful will take every opportunity to hijack activist energies for their own ends.
The Future of Neurodiversity - Boston Review
The movement has made important progress, but focusing on rights and representation leaves too many behind.
In the United States, the policing of “normal” affective responses to such horrors is also a form of neuronormative domination.
Instead of working to grant some individuals success in reformed institutions, Neurodivergent Power would place our sights squarely on our collective ability to resist the entire economic system that disables and discriminates against us.
This must be part of a broader effort to foster neurodivergent consciousness-raising through the development of cultural institutions. Consider the importance of neurodiversity studies departments in universities, not to mention mad studies and disability studies departments. While universities have been using neurodiversity vocabularies to rebrand existing institutions, true neurodiversity studies departments do not yet exist. Yet they will be vital for unearthing suppressed histories of neurodivergence, for the development of political theories of neurodivergent emancipation, and for aiding in the development of a mass neurodivergent consciousness. Such consciousness is not merely about neurodivergent pride, but instead must show how neuronormativity relates to the material base and social relations of the world system of global capitalism. The sites of so much contemporary struggle—over war, incarceration, borders, homelessness, and workers’ unions—need an awareness to ground ever increasing solidarity between neurodivergent people and other groups facing domination in the same system.
Just as vitally, a politics of Neurodivergent Power must make more efforts to connect the oppression of neurodivergent people to anti-imperialist, decolonial, and abolitionist efforts globally, much as the Black Power movement did. This entails more than simply recognizing that intersectionality is important, as many proponents of Liberal Neurodiversity already assert. It entails collective organizing and movement building to put intersectionality into practice. While the potential members and needs of such a movement are highly diverse, it is also true that similar forms of neurodivergent disablement are evident across the globe.
Ultimately, a politics of neurodiversity that is for everyone is a politics of Neurodivergent Power. This means collective resistance to the production of normal subjectivity, debility, and disablement, to fight for a freer future that meets all of our needs. Individually, we are disabled; united, we hold a form of strength that could help us achieve collective liberation.
Elijah the Rainbow Dream Dragon.
He's under a CC BY-NC licence so y'all are welcome to use him for whatever you like provided it's non-commercial.
I'm also working on a fullbody reference drawing for his boyfriend as well. Keep an…
Horatio the Rainbow Dream Dragon.
Like his BF Elijah, he's under a CC BY-NC licence so you can use him for whatever you like provided it's non-commercial. He's here just to spread the love and happiness! 💖
Elijah:
He's under a CC…
‘You must know this story’: Why Freedom Summer’s murders matter today
During the 1964 effort to register Black Mississippians to vote, the Klan killed three civil rights activists. The atrocity still reveberates.
Chi08 mark
Another account hits the news of a school implementing extremely controlling behavioural policies, in the name of turning the school around.
All these pieces report similar approaches - immediate detentions escalating quickly to isolation for minor infractions, including…
— Naomi Fisher (@naomicfisher)
Dripping Springs Pride organizers say signs to promote this weekend's festival were vandalized
Organizers said the festival will still go on as planned with safety measures in place.
Why We Need More Autistic Health Care Professionals and How to Support Them | Autism in Adulthood
Many autistic characteristics (especially attention to detail, social nonconformity, monotropism, and knowledge of autism) set autistic health care professionals apart as especially well-suited for their fields. Increasing the number of autistic health care professionals will benefit their clients, colleagues, and health care fields as a whole. Autistic health care professionals face many challenges, including being misunderstood and discouraged from participating in their fields. Despite the challenges, many health care professionals are thriving. Autistic connections and solidarity are an important part of helping autistic health care professionals overcome obstacles and succeed. Suggestions for making health care more accommodating of autistic people are offered. Recommendations are also provided for autistic health care professionals looking to find community and meet others in the same position.
Creating Safety for Autistic Folk
A bright, 11-page infographic about how to Create Safety for Autistic Folk.This resource is suitable for parents, educators. or any adult who works with Autistic people.This resource may be printed and displayed in clinics, classrooms, or other locations. It may be printed and shared with educators,...
To Whoever’s in Charge - AJ Wilkerson
This is not a Comedy Special.
I went off-script recently during a show at Helium Comedy Club in Portland and decided to just speak from my heart about my mental health, being diagnosed Autistic at 30, and medical marijuana.
I hope some of this makes you laugh, but more importantly I want it to make you all think, feel, and then take action in the federal legalization of marijuana and in mental health awareness.
Recorded on December 11th, 2021
Rethinking Social Communication Support: Exploring Communication Partner Training for Autistic Adults and Their Neurotypical Communication Partners | Autism in Adulthood
Autistic and neurotypical people often have difficulty communicating effectively with one another and understanding each other's experiences. Despite evidence that communication breakdowns occur at the interactional level, most social communication interventions focus only on behaviors to be changed by autistic adults, and rely heavily on teaching neurotypical social skills. In this Perspective, we draw on our experiences as a mixed-neurotype team of clinicians, researchers, and advocates to argue that a new framework for social communication support is needed. Specifically, we propose that communication partner training (CPT), an umbrella term for programs that teach strategies to people with communication differences and communication partners alike, is an appropriate framework to guide future social communication support for autistic adults and their neurotypical communication partners. We provide an overview of how CPT is currently used with adults with acquired communication differences (e.g., aphasia, traumatic brain injury) and their communication partners. We highlight three key components of such programs: (i) promoting increased knowledge and understanding of communication differences and each person's unique communication profile; (ii) adapting the communication environment; (iii) and identifying collaborative strategies that people with communication differences and their communication partners can use to foster meaningful interactions. We acknowledge that there are important fundamental differences between autistic adults and people with acquired communication differences; however, we propose that CPT can be used to inform social communication support for autistic adults and their neurotypical communication partners. We provide recommendations for future CPT program development within autism research. Some recommendations include the need to acknowledge each person's intersecting identities and the dynamic impact of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on communication. We also recommend future research to explore ways that CPT can be applied to newly diagnosed autistic adults, as well as autistic youth, and their communication partners. Finally, we highlight the importance of foregrounding future program development in the lived experience of autistic adults and their communication partners.
Drs. Dawn Prince-Hughes and Nick Walker on Neuroexpansive Embodiment, Autistic Movement, and Culture
CASY Cultural Autism Studies (The Ethnography Project led by Dr. Dawn Prince-Hughes) has officially restarted for 2023! We are pleased to share our conversa...
The Unique Responsibility of Neuroexpansive Minds for Cultural Inclusion
We have a unique responsibility to include other neurodivergent minds in commodified bodies in our movement toward cultural inclusion.
As an advocate for those with neuroexpansive minds in bodies that have become commodified bodies, I have come to understand, over the years, that a piecemeal approach to the valuing of difference and extensions of freedoms for all designated expendable in modern culture depends on every such movement to band together. A veteran of many social justice movements, it is clear that as we celebrate the crumbs we seek, we have failed to see that without a root transformation, a society founded on horrendous casual cruelty will simply close ranks after one group or another is finally “accepted.” But as Abraham Lincoln famously quoted, “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves….” I believe this especially true of those who’s very innate sensitivities and connections are responsible for them being pushed out of the cultural sphere in the first place.
Modern neurotypical humans, in the history of all life on the planet, are the only ones who have ever engaged in the kinds of enslavement, torture, greed, and insatiable appetite for killing we face now. Only the basest hubris would see these developments as progress. From my perspective, modern humanity are the “neurodivergent” ones. I would argue that what is currently called neurodivergence – expansive sensitivities, processing styles that include every part of the environment, a sense of kinship with living things – are actually the natural state of a reality imbued with consciousness.
Modern, connectively truncated influence has driven an obsession with homogeneity, and increasingly raised a maniacal rejection of inward and outward difference to a hellish art form. The lives (and deaths) of sentient, neuroexpansive beings is foundational to daily life and underscores the danger of using gifts evolutionarily tooled for a better, more compassionate future are pressed into service for the structure we were put here to change.
What disturbed me, beyond envisioning pigs crammed into dark, poorly ventilated warehouses, desperate for natural food, was my autistic colleague’s lack of moral reflection on the fact that such an action by an animal is inarguably evidence that they possess neuroexpansive minds that are ignored because there is social and monetary benefit in continuing to see them only as bodies to make money from. My colleague’s attitude struck me as some kind of neurological Stockholm Syndrome, reflecting that the ability to compartmentalize, dismiss suffering, and commodify other sentient beings is an evolutionary trademark of the neurotruncated power structure, not the flowering of the sensitivity and connection that is at our core.
Unable to see shades of lived nuance and constitutionally lacking organs of exquisite sensitivity, the truncated, neurotypical gaze rakes over the bodies of neuroexpansive life – whether designated autistic, animal, any other undesirable caste, or nature itself – they assess them only in terms of cost, threats, or utility. They can’t or won’t see them.
In mimicking neurotruncated behavior, we have been able to ignore not just the suffering of farmed animals. We have been complicit in the reality that 70% of all indigenous animals have been wiped out in the last 50 years. And as Covid loosens its grip on the world, it is easy to forget that it, like N1H1, SARS, Ebola, Bird Flu, and Swine Flu, we’re all the result of humans demanding to eat the bodies of others with different minds – farmed and free – at a pace and volume that cages stacked in barns and wet markets become petri dish prisons because a monolithic, neuro-retentive pathology continues unchecked. The lungs of the living planet are scorched and wheezing in the ashes of the Amazon and the coals of the Congo fires set to clear land for more sentient animals to be raised as saleable bodies, a planet-wide gas chamber. Fires, droughts, dust storms, ocean acidification, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires – all happening at an historically unprecedented intensity.
I believe we are constitutionally, and rightly, more sensitive to this kind of compartmentalized dissonance and the suffering it compounds. We are becoming proud that we see things holistically, without arbitrary cultural filters. It is a gift that accounts for our ability to make clear connections between disparate phenomena, and to draw complex lines between one concept and another in ways unfathomable to more truncated minds. This state of natural connection should also give us a unique empathy and solidarity with all minds who are trying to kick their way out of boxes and chains, literally and socially.
We can start a new, inclusive movement by leading the way back to the primal awareness, the connective wisdom, we were born with, because we are first and foremost, in all ways that matter, neuroexpansive minds.
@erin.claiming_disability • "Weaponized Accessibility" (AND YES IT HAPPENS OFTEN) So "Weaponized Accessibility," is when a b... • Threads
Grey rock method: What it is and how to use it effectively
The grey rock method involves becoming unresponsive to abusive or manipulative behavior so that the perpetrator will lose interest.
@jonbrosio • Everyone says, "Learn marketing – it's the world's most powerful skill." But where the hell do... • Threads
A Materialist History of Pathology and Neurodiversity: A Conversation with Robert Chapman
Robert Chapman, PhD is a philosopher and social theorist specializing in disability and mental health.